February 14, 2009

Humans seek for opportunity in every circumstance. But that doesn’t make humans opportunists. Firstly, let’s define opportunism and opportunist just like the way dictionaries do (here and here).

Everybody, at least every grown-up people, realize that the world is actually grey. Someone can be lost inside the turbulence of life if that person has no clear definition about what is black and what is white. That defined black and white is principle. Different beings may have different principles.

I’m not saying that every opportunistic person have no principles. In fact, in politics, business, or even love life, some of them have defined their own principles clearly. Some of the principles are even the so-called “good principles”, the ones that follow the “golden rule”. The problem arises when those human beings cannot hold on to the principles as the result of their natural instincts. Greed, jealousy, discontentedness, anxiety and other negative human attributes, combined with the flaws of human-built system was the trigger of opportunistic actions. It was the basic foundation of crisis, war, and suffering.

For me, holding on to principle is absolute. For instance, taking someone’s belonging, no matter how much I want it, or need it, is just intolerable. It’s true that sometimes principles are negotiable. But it shouldn’t be too flexible. Once a principle is considered flexible, it will be just like an old rubber bracelet. So instead of being addicted to stretching the principles, please just redefine the new black and white and stick to it. Don’t be an opportunist.

February 5, 2008

( imported, originally posted on Jan 5th, 08 )

“Infatuation is when you think he’s as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he’s as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford – but you’ll take him anyway.” ~Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975

An engineer is a person who undergoes trainings to prepare him/her so that when he/she is faced to a technical problem, he/she can analyze the problem and find the solution(s) for the problem. A couple of hours ago, in a class, my lecturer said that someone deserves an “Engineer” title if only he/she has got something that called “Sense of Engineering”. That means he/she can predict the solution(s) within few moments and can also determine whether a given solution is reasonable or it is just nonsense.

“Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.” ~W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook, 1949

Now, let’s talk about love. To an engineer, love should be the variable that he/she will try to avoid most. Love is unpredictable and impossible to measure. Love is also unstable, it can drastically changes from a “extremely happy” state to “extremely upset” state or vice-versa in just a short period of times. There is no iteration method that can exactly determine what state of love one will experience tomorrow, or even in the next hour. Sometimes -or maybe most of the times- a solution that won’t make any sense can be the best solution of a love problem compared to a reasonable one.

“Forget love – I’d rather fall in chocolate!” ~Sandra J. Dykes

So the conclusion is that Engineers should avoid love, isn’t it? Well, theoretically they should. But in the reality, most of them won’t and the rest can only try. The reason is that love is simply unavoidable. Love is a mystery. And most of us are struggling everyday to solve all of the mysteries that have been given to us by god. It’s in our nature as a human. So when dealing with love, forget this “Sense of Engineering” and let’s just be humans.